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PRESENTED BY 



JUSTICE for CHINA 



AMERICAN DIPLOMACY 
CRITICISED AND 
FOREIGN OUTRAGE 
CONDEMNED 

(i ITS there one man with a human 
j£ heart in his breast who would 
not be a Boxer, if he were a 
"Chinese, and fight to the last gasp 
"against the entrance of this devil's 
" horde into his empire ? If there is, 
"let him hide himself in knowledge 
"of the shame in which his fellow 

" men WOUld hold him. ' ' — Brooklyn Eagle 

Chas. M. Hiccins & Co. 

NEW YORK -CHICAGO-LONDON 
1900 



A PLEA FOR JUSTICE TO 
CHINA. 



An EXPLANATION of the "CHINESE PUZZLE" 

AND A 

CRITICISM OF OUR DIPLOMACY. 



An Open Letter 

TO THE EDITOR OF THE BROOKLYN EAGLE. 



BY 

CHAS. M. HIGGINS, 

OF THE BROOKLYN ETHICAL ASSOCIATION. 



CHAS. M. HIGGINS & CO., 

NEW YORK — CHICAGO — LONDON. 
I9OO. 






^ 



\9 



Gift 

12 Jr. OS 



5 
S 



AN OPEN LETTER FOR JUSTICE TO 
CHINA. 



To the Editor of the Brooklyn Eagle. 

I would lik-e to call your attention to a few little 
news paragraphs in some of your recent issues which 
will throw r a flood of light on the " other side" of the 
Chinese controversy — the side on which our people and 
our editors seem to have been paying very little atten- 
tion, viz., the Chinese side. 

The first matter I would refer you to is the account 
of the violent riot in Akron, Ohio, reported in your issue 
of August 23rd. Here is the case of a most barbarous 
mob right in one of our most populous and civilized 
states, at the very door, almost, of our own President's 
home, yet we are being told right along of the superior 
civilization of our people as compared with the Chinese, 
and the urgent necessity of our sending great military 
and naval forces into China to suppress her mobs and 



defend our people, and to such an extent is this neces- 
sary — so uncivilized and violent are these people as com- 
pared with us — that we cannot even enter into any 
agreements or negotiations with China for peace and 
order, but must first completely ignore and override all 
her officials and all their overtures, and all the national 
rights of China, and then unite with a combination of 
foreign despoilers to carry a flagrant war right into the 
capital of this great nation and lay her prostrate and dis- 
membered at our feet, and then dictate to her at cannon's 
mouth how she shall govern her external and internal 
affairs, all because a few Chinese mobs dared to protest 
to their own government against outrageous foreign 
aggressions, and endangered or destroyed a few foreign 
lives in the operation. 

It was therefore a telling and fitting instance in the 
" Irony of Fate" that while our State Department has 
been insulting the Chinese people — one third of the 
earth's population — with the Pharisaic assumption of our 
own superiority and the barbarous unreliability and 
violence of the Chinese Government, that an American 
mob should give such a splendid illustration of our 
" superior civilization" right in the very State of the 
President himself. Here was a mob, following on similar 
but lesser ones in New Orleans and in our own great 
metropolis, that in one night killed several persons and 
mortally wounded many more, blew up their own City 
Hall with dynamite, disregarded all protests of their 
municipal officers, who had to escape out of back win- 
dows to avoid being blown to pieces ; and who then 
burned down several City buildings, shot the firemen who 



came to the rescue and cut the fire hose, resulting In a 
destruction of all the records of the City Engineer and 
Surveyor and a loss, it is said, of half a million of dollars. 

All this was done in pursuit of one negro criminal 
to wreak vengeance on him, and being unable to carry 
out this design, they then expended their violence on 
their own police and City officers, and on the property 
of their own City. And failing to get the negro they 
were after, they then shouted "Get a nigger any place." 
" Lynch any nigger." Now, if China or any other nation 
can show any more violent or barbarous mob than this, 
we would like to know where it can be found. All this 
was done in one calendar day, and if the same ratio of 
destruction and disorder were kept up in Akron for one 
or more months, I am afraid that the work of the alleged 
44 Boxer " mobs, which we have been told have been so 
rampant in Pekin for the last sixty days, would utterly 
pale in comparison. 

Now this Akron affair is really only an ordinary or 
mild instance of the mobs that our " civilization " can 
produce at any time, and has produced a score of times 
in recent years, whenever the passions or interests of our 
people are particularly stirred or crossed, as is shown by 
our various ''strike" mobs, our anti-Chinese, anti-nigger 
and anti-foreign mobs, and our political riots and. assas- 
sinations North and South, East and West. Why, there- 
fore, will editors, preachers, and our people generally, 
continue to give such currency to the chronic cant and 
humbug of the essential superiority of our civilization 
and our sense of law and order to that of the Chinese and 
other non-Christian peoples? I think it can be easily 



demonstrated that all the Chinese mobs in the last twenty 
years have not done one quarter the violence to person 
and property as has been done by our own mobs in that 
time. 

And notwithstanding all the hysterical outcry that 
we have lately heard about Chinese mobs, I am now 
willing to wager that records will show that all the 
Americans killed by Chinese mobs of all kinds, up to 
date, do not amount to one quarter the number of 
Chinese which our own mobs have killed in the same 
time. And while we are talking so much now about in- 
demnities for Chinese violence and damages to us, viola- 
tions of our treaties, etc., suppose we look up our own 
records of broken treaties with China and unpaid indem- 
nities due her for outrages on her citizens here, and it 
may surprise us to find that the legal and moral balance 
is not nearly so much on our side as we may have 
imagined it to be in our Pharisaic conceit. 

And just here let us also ask how many of our peo- 
ple have made any effort to learn the real cause of the 
Chinese mobs of which we have heard so much of late, 
or try to find out what is the real nature of the uprisings 
in China against the "Christian" and the "Foreigner." 
Human nature is certainly very much the same all the 
world over, whether a man's skin be white or yellow, 
and if any great movement becomes general among any 
people, we can be pretty sure that they have some good 
cause for it which would move us just as strongly if we 
were in their place. Let any one, therefore, who wants 
to know what terrible provocation the Chinese people 



have had for their present uprising, read the several arti- 
cles on the Chinese troubles in the current numbers of 
the leading magazines, written by experts on the subject, 
and which show such aggressions and outrages on China 
by foreign nations, French, Germans, English, Russians, 
etc., that grossly belie our pretentious cant of superior 
civilization, and fully justify the Chinese epithet of 
"Foreign devils." * 

The second news item to which I would ask your 
attention will be found in the reports from your Special 
Washington correspondent on the first page of your issue 
of Tuesday, August 21st, and is as follows : — 

"It is an established principle of international law 
"that members of the enemy's royal family, his chief 
"ministers of state and his diplomatic agents, are 
"liable to capture even though they may not be 
"actually engaged in hostile operations. Their 
"position makes them so important to the enemy in 
"the conduct of his war that they cannot be treated 
"as ordinary combatants." 

Here, therefore, is the clear statement that accord- 
ing to international law, ministers and diplomatic agents 
of the enemy can be legally held as hostages or prisoners 
of war, in case of war between the parties. 

Now this point has been applied by your special cor- 
respondent to the case of the Powers against the Chinese 
Government, but it will, of course, apply equally well to 
the case of China against the Powers. Here, therefore, 

* See North American tterietr, Autf. 1900. 

7 



is a clear legal admission of what I have been all along 
contending in this Chinese controversy, viz., that after 
the assault of the Powers on Taku and the invasion of 
China by the allied armies, and their capture of Tien Tsin, 
a gross and unwarranted act of war was thereby commit- 
ted against China, and after this state of war was thus 
precipitated on China by the acts of the Powers them- 
selves, she was thereafter perfectly justified in holding 
the ministers and military guards of these Powers then 
in Pekin as prisoners of war or hostages, and as a basis 
to sue for peace. I think that any international lawyer, 
or unprejudiced expert in the law or rules of war and 
diplomacy, will clearly sustain this conclusion as sound 
and legal. 

Now there has been a great mystery made about the 
attitude of China to the Powers, and about the real con- 
dition of things in Pekin, but it seems to me that any 
reasonable man can see that there should not be much 
mystery about it at all, as it seems perfectly evident from 
all the facts known to us that, since the assault on Taku, 
China has been carefully preserving the lives of the 
ministers and their attaches as prisoners of war and hos- 
tages, as she had every right to do, according to all codes 
of international law and diplomacy recognized between 
the Powers themselves in case of war between them. I 
Before the overt acts of war were committed by the 
Powers, it is a matter of record that China asked the 
ministers to leave under their own military escort if they 
considered themselves unsafe in Pekin, and she offered 
to provide them further escort, but they would not go. 
After these acts of war of the Powers, then it was beyond 

8 



question perfectly legal and in good form for China to 
hold all those representatives of the Powers, who would 
not previously leave her domains, as hostages and prison- 
ers of war. This China actually did, and she sued for 
peace on this basis, as she had a perfect right to do, say- 
ing to our own nation particularly, and to the Powers 
in general, substantially this : "You have made war un- 
justly and illegally on us on the pretence or excuse to 
suppress some of our mobs and save the lives of your 
ministers, which we have never sought to take, as you 
have ridiculously and falsely charged. These men, with 
the exception of two who have been killed by mob vio- 
lence, which we regret and will atone for, are all safe 
and in our keeping, and if, as you say, your main object 
is to rescue your representatives, we will deliver them 
safely to you if you will agree to stop your outrageous 
war on us, cease further invasion of our domains, and 
abandon your contemplated march upon our capital, and 
the seizure of our Government." 

This position and offer of China, which was so per- 
fectly just in ethics, and so perfectly sound under the laws 
of war, the rules of diplomacy and the international 
usages or laws of the Powers themselves, was scouted 
and rejected by them. Why? Because of the outra- 
geous and indecent charge that it was a mere trick of 
Chinese duplicity. That China did not mean to deliver 
the foreigners at all, and could not deliver them safely; 
but she only intended to gain time so that she could bet- 
ter massacre them all finally in her barbarous stronghold 
of Pekin. This idea is one we might expect to be held 
by prattling youngsters used to reading fairy stories of 



murderous ogres and dark dungeons, but we would hard- 
ly expect it of grown-up men trained in the affairs of 
modern nations, yet this, I regret to say, is the nursery 
state of mind that seems to have prevailed with the pres- 
ent administration. And just now our State Department 
seems to be flattering itself particularly on the brilliancy 
of its diplomacy which has got us involved hand and 
glove with the despoilers of China, while it congratu- 
lates itself on a joint semi-mock-heroic rescue with all 
the nations of Europe — a rescue which could have been 
effected long ago without any such great loss of life or 
expenditure of means with great credit to ourselves, and 
without insulting and trampling upon a great nation. 

Now during all this serio-comic game of bluff or 
comic-tragedy between China and the Powers, China has, 
of course, never openly said that she has been holding 
the legationers as hostages or prisoners of war, but she 
has been, apparently, and properly, doing so all the same. 
And so, in the same way, the Powers will not admit that 
they have made and are making war on China, but, 
nevertheless, they absolutely have waged a most flagrant 
and outrageous war upon her from the Forts at Taku to the 
Palace at Pekin. We are therefore about "quits" in this 
barbarous game of bluff — diplomatically considered — 
but, otherwise, w T e are the worst offenders both against 
common ethics and the laws of nations, and China is the 
worst sufferer by about "one hundredfold. It is about 
time, therefore, that this kind of international immorality 
both in pretence and act, was stopped and atoned for all 
around. 

The reasons for not accepting the Chinese peace pro- 



posals were not only a barbarous insult to the Chinese 
people and Government, but very discreditable to the 
manliness of our own nation, and was, I hold, utterly 
unwarranted by the whole history of this "Chinese 
Puzzle," for have not the results repeatedly shown that 
the worst lies, exaggerations and fairy tales in this comic 
tragedy of the past few months, have been nearly all on 
the side of the Powers, and not on that of the Chinese? 
Has it not been found to be a fact that every statement 
made in the Edicts of the Chinese Government, and the 
despatches of her ministers and officials, about the con- 
dition of the ministers, etc., etc., was finally shown to be 
absolutely correct ? For example : The anti-Chinese 
reports had all these ministers massacred in various ways 
repeatedly, and alternately brought to life to be massa- 
cred over again, until finally we were gravely told of that 
fatal "Hollow square" of ministers and guards who held 
out "game to the last" against terrible odds of the mur- 
derous "Boxers," but were eventually massacred to the 
last man ! And how within that hollow square were 
screened their women and children, which they had pre- 
viously shot or poisoned to avoid the fate that the 
Chinese women really got from the superior foreigners 
in Tien Tsin. Have we also forgotten the comic opera 
tale of the Russian minister boiled in oil, and the little 
babies sliced by swords, etc., etc., ad nauseaum? Yet 
all of this was readily believed by our gullible, self- 
righteous people, ready to believe anything of "heathen" 
nations. 

During all this time that the foreigners' reports were 
thus rioting in gory lies, the stolid Chinese Government 



ii 



and its officials kept declaring that the ministers were 
safe, but this was declared to be another Chinese trick 
and lie, and they were laughed or hissed to scorn. Still, 
we all know now that the Chinese told the simple truth, 
and on the other side were the ridiculous and outrageous 
liars and panic-mongers. 

Now, in view of all these facts, is it not about time 
that some one among our superior selves made a little 
apology to the Chinese Government or people, and that 
we commence to treat China in a half civilized and decent 
way, and do with her as we would like to be done by ? 

Let us, now therefore, take up the ridiculous story 
of the alleged siege under which the ministers are said to 
have been held in Pekin for about two months, designed 
specially for their destruction or massacre. This, I sub- 
mit, is also quite a fairy story, almost as bad as the fatal 
hollow square of massacre, with its center of poisoned 
women and children. And first let me ask why should 
the Government of China want to do such a crazy act as 
a wholesale massacre of ministers would be ? And second, 
if China really wanted to destroy this handful of foreign- 
ers in her own stronghold of Pekin, where she was abso- 
lutely supreme, does any sane man think she could not 
do it, N or that there would be one of them left alive now? 

The wonderful tale that we are now asked to believe 
is that for thirty or forty days a few hundred foreigners 
were under bombardment night and day, in legations 
never capable of serious resistance ; that shots and shells 
of all arms were fired upon them by a great besiegeing 
force of both riotous boxers and authorized imperial 
troops in the great city of Pekin, within whose frowning 



12 



wails was an overwhelming force specially brought there 
for the annihilation of these foreigners, and yet this little 
handful of men and women proved so invulnerable to all 
this that at the end of this terrible siege, only this list of 
casualties is reported : Out of a united force of nine na- 
tions, only 54 all told are killed, and ioo wounded, while 
all the ministers, their women and children, and several 
hundreds of their attaches and guards, are all well ! Now 
surely, there is some kind of a " fairy story " in all this, 
and we have not got the whole truth yet, or else the 
marvelous invulnerability which we have been told the 
superstitious Boxers claim for themselves has been magi- 
cally transferred to the foreigners. 

It was not enough, however, to be asked to believe 
this annihilation siege story of thirty days without hurt- 
ing one missionary, one minister or one woman, but our 
own minister, Conger, has now perpetrated this alarming 
report, which is going the rounds of the press with all 
seriousness as a proof of the justification of the outrage- 
ous war made on China, and the merits of our " diplom- 
acy " therein. The night before the allies entered Pekin, 
Conger gravely tells us that : " Desperate efforts made 
last night to exterminate us." And just here let us dwell 
a moment on the depth and seriousness of the words 
Desperate effort to exterminate, and let us remember that 
the Chinese were in an overwhelming force against a 
handful of foreigners, in their own stronghold, with every 
means at hand to carry out their alleged intention to ex- 
terminate, and no one to prevent them, and after all these 
terrible conditions, what is the result of " this desperate 
effort to exterminate?" — just this, in Conger's own 

13 



words, " Mitchell, American sailor, and a Russian and a 
Japanese, wounded, German killed." 

Now, I think that most men will readily admit that 
there is something a little incredible about this report, 
and that it would be almost ridiculous to believe that 
there could be any " desperate effort to exterminate " under 
the conditions prevailing in Pekin, with such a ridiculous 
result as three men wounded and one man killed, and 
that it is more charitable to believe that some one con- 
nected with the legations has got a bad case of Pekin 
fever, and his mind is not working quite rightly yet. 

I therefore think that when we get the real truth of 
the actual conditions in Pekin from both sides, we will 
find that the ministers and their guards were never in 
any serious or organized danger there until after the 
war made on China by the Powers themselves, and that 
all the casualties that they suffered were the results of their 
being held as prisoners of war, and of their own aggressive 
actions on the Chinese in Pekin. One very significant act 
was reported from Pekin after the killing of Ketteler, the 
German minister, of which very little notice seems to 
have been taken by any of the papers, and that is that 
after this murder, the Germa?i soldiers in Pekin made an 
assault on the Chinese foreign office, and burned it down 
and killed several Chinese officials there. Now here was 
an act of war committed by foreign soldiers on the Chin- 
ese Government right in Pekin itself, and what could 
China be expected to do but to defend herself and sup- 
press the foreign belligerents in her own capital. In this 
• conflict, the Germans were probably joined by the other 



14 



foreign soldiers, and there was probably a general fight, 
until, of course, the Chinese forces overpowered the 
foreigners, and they gradually retreated into their lega- 
tions, and were afterwards kept there as prisoners of war. 
under strict surveillance night and day. And it is prob- 
able that the Chinese soldiers had strict orders to only 
use such force as necessary to suppress all aggressive 
acts of the foreigners, to preserve peace and order in 
Pekin, to carefully respect and preserve the lives of the 
ministers and their attaches, but to allow no aggression 
or disorder of their guards or soldiers, pending a settle- 
ment of the war forced on China by the Powers. And all 
the casualties suffered by the Legation Guards occurred 
most probably under these conditions. 

This theory, it seems to me, fits exactly with all 
the admitted facts, and seems sane or reasonable, where- 
as the theories of the unprovoked aggressive siege for 
purely exterminating purposes would appear to be the 
freak of a fevered brain, or the concoction of a gang of 
deliberate despoilers of the Chinese nation, desperate to 
fasten on some plausible legal excuse for their outrage- 
ous war upon China. 

Now, up to a certain point in this Chinese business, 
our nation had taken a perfectly sound and just stand of 
pure neutrality in Chinese matters, and protection to our 
own citizens, as shown by our stand at Taku, but since this 
time our State Department seems to have lost its head, 
and has abandoned this safe and righteous policy for the 
very dangerous and unjust one which is now considered 
very smart, "and a fine example of "diplomacy" and 
American " grit," but which we think will turn out to be 



a most serious blunder for the Administration and the 
country. Our nation has thus now been made to play 
the part that just suited the cabal of foreign aggressors, 
intent from the first on the prostration and dismember- 
ment of China, and her division between them. It has 
therefore quite suited the purpose of these powers to 
tickle the vanity of our Administration by letting it think 
that it is making a great diplomatic reputation for itself, 
and in apparently " leading " and " showing the way " to 
the Powers, when the fact is that this course was the very 
one the Powers wanted and had marked out from the 
first, viz., to make no agreements with China, but to pros- 
trate and dismember her as they pleased under pretence 
of a high civilizing mission and a thrilling rescue of a 
handful of foreigners who probably never were in any 
serious danger, except that brought on by their own aggress- 
ive acts. 

It will therefore turn out, I think, that instead of a 
brilliant piece of diplomacy for us, we have been simply 
made a " cat's-paw " for the dismembering scheme of the 
Powers, which will soon appear when the soldiers of 
Germany and their great commander-in-chief, with the 
other European forces arrive in China. Whereas, if our 
Administration had accepted the peaceful and reasonable 
overtures of China to mediate, and to stop this outrage- 
ous war on her, then the little game of Europe would be 
blocked, and we would have earned a great victory for 
reasonableness, peace and equity between nations, and 
an influence in Chinese affairs that we could have got in 
no other way, whereas what we will now get is what the 
cat got from the monkey, all through a puerile following 

16 



of foreign suggestion which has been taken for a bright 
piece of real and original American diplomacy and man- 
hood. This kind of diplomacy, therefore, seems to be 
just about as bright and sure to make good friends for 
its authors in the Courts and drawing-rooms of England 
and.. Germany (while they wink the other eye), as that 
which gives away control of our inter-ocean canals and 
slices of our Alaskan territory. 

Why, therefore, cannot our American diplomacy be 
really American, and while we believe devotedly in 
Monroe Doctrine or "America for the Americans," why 
cannot we help China a little in realizing the correspond- 
ing principle of " China for the Chinese? " 

If we look at the present situation, we will see that 
Germany, with her big and ready army, is now in prob- 
able alliance with England, whose military strength is 
absorbed in South Africa, and both nations are evidently 
up to serious mischief in China. To block this little 
German-English game, France has now openly declared 
for a policy of pure justice and neutrality to China, which 
is even more "American" than was our original attitude 
before we lost our heads to European suggestion in not 
accepting China's peace proposals, and mediating for her. 
In this, I, therefore, insist again, that our Administration 
made a big blunder, which will be evident when the 
serious international troubles come, which are sure to 
follow, with a lot of foreign armies in possession of the 
capital of China, and which at this stage, they will never 
leave without grabbing big slices of her territory. If, 
therefore, we do not now intend to fight or grab, aft cy 

17 



doing all we could to help in the prostration and dis- 
memberment of China by the capture of her capital and 
Government, and which we could so beautifully have 
prevented, what a cur-dog move it will now appear to 
the rest of the Powers to get up and leave China to her 
fate with our tail between our legs, upon a show of real 
trouble and real war, as is now alleged to be the policy 
of our Administration in case of a real conflict of the 
nations with China. 

If, however, we had never joined in this prostration 
and outrage of China, but kept up our manly protest 
against it, while holding for absolute protection to our 
own, and had mediated for China on that basis when she 
asked us, we would have struck an attitude of undoubted 
justice, manliness and strength from which we would 
never have to shrink, and which would have compelled 
the respect of the world. We would then have succeed- 
ed in not only getting our own rights to the utmost, but 
would have compelled a show of justice to one of the 
greatest nations in the world, now suffering one of the 
foulest wrongs which has ever been perpetrated on any 
people, and whose nearest ethical parallel can be found in 
the fable of the Wolf and the Lamb. 

Justice to China now demands, however, that the 
Powers agree to cease at once their acts of war upon her 
and retire from her territory and agree that only such 
forces shall be left here and there in China as may be 
necessary for protection merely and not for any domina- 
tion or dictation or for any further acts of war on the 
Chinese people who must be left absolutely free to re- 
form or re-assemble their own government in their own 

18 



capital, and regulate their own affairs, and then enter 
into any agreements or treaties for the settlement of any 
existing disputes, without the barbarous duress and in- 
sult of a lot of foreign bayonets thrust over them by a 
combination of foreign aggressors and dictators who are 
there ostensibly to give them a higher example of " civili- 
zation" and "morality," but whose violence, greed and 
injustice utterly misrepresent and disgrace the essential 
principles of that Christianity which they so loudly 
proclaim. 

After this withdrawal of the foreign forces let there 
then be formed a great Court of Arbitration by repre- 
sentatives of all the Christian and non-Christian Powers 
to settle the grave issues growing out of and preceding 
this war. Let the Chinese Government be held to strict 
accountability for the life of every foreign missionary, 
legationer, minister, soldier or other foreigner killed by 
Chinese mob, or otherwise through the fault or neglect 
of the Government or populace of China. And let full 
and proper indemnity be awarded therefor as well as for 
all foreign property illegally destroyed by any Chinese 
violence. And, on the other side, just as rigidly, and 
with equal justice, let the Court order the invading 
powers to fully indemnify China for every fort blown up, 
every ship sunk, every soldier or other man killed, every 
woman outraged and every house burned or looted dur- 
ing the terrible war which they have just made on China 
and which — with an inconceivable effrontery — they tell 
us was not war. 

While we are about this business of a general ac- 
counting or settlement with China on a basis of true 



equity and reciprocity we would better settle the whole 
long standing account fully and rightly once for all, and 
with no special favors to any party, but on equal terms 
to all. And while we are thus balancing accounts with 
China for her killings and violence to some of our people, 
and their property, let us not forget to honestly remind 
the Court to debit our account with China with the in- 
demnities due her for the many Chinese lives taken in 
the West years ago which we have never yet paid and 
which may show quite a little American balance due on 
the Chinese side of the ledger instead of a large one on 
our own side as most of us have probably imagined during 
all this semi-hysterical outcry against China and her 
mobs. 

Let the Court also decree that all the territory and 
property taken from China by violent aggression or 
abject robbery like the Germans in Shantung and the 
French in Tonquin, etc., etc., be immediately given up 
and returned to their rightful owners, and let the foreign 
dictators be ordered to retire and repent and study the 
gospel of Christianity in their leisure moments. 

And let this great Court finally appoint a picked 
body of Christian Missionaries and send them to the 
capitals of Europe with a special commission to v convert 
the^Emperor of Germany and other rulers over there. 




Of the Brooklyn Ethical Association. 



271 Ninth St., Brooklyn, N. Y. 
August 25, 1900. 



ADDENDUM. 

Just as this letter is given to the printer, news is re- 
ceived of Russia's offer to act on the policy here suggested, 
viz : to withdraw her forces from China and leave the 
Chinese people free to re-assemble their government in 
Pekin, restore order and enter into negotiations with the 
Powers for the settlement of the past troubles. And 
Russia now asks the other Powers to join her in this just 
and broad-minded policy but all, except France, hesitate 
or refuse to do so. 

In this liberal policy, now suggested by what is sup- 
posed to be the most autocratic power in Christendom, 
we see a curious contrast to the narrow and blundering 
policy of our own government, which is supposed to re- 
present the most broad-minded, humane and democratic 
power in the world. And where we originally had the 
first chance, through China's peace proposals, to set an 
example to the world of broad justice and humanity in 
the treatment of an international trouble, yet we let this 
grand opportunity slip, by following the sinister sugges- 
tions of scheming foreign courts to put no trust in China. 
It may now be recalled that Russia was the first to offer 



21 



to accede to the Chinese peace proposals made to us, as 
she agreed to accept the safe delivery of her minister, 
etc., and she is again in advance of us in offering to with- 
draw her forces and leave the Chinese people free to set 
their own house in order. Russian diplomats — unlike 
our own — are smart enough to see the obvious justice 
and good politics in this move, and, with those of France, 
they also see through the probable scheme of Germany 
and England to get possession of the Government of 
China by first getting into Pekin and then staying there 
with a big army until they have forced from China what 
they want to get. How long, therefore, will it take our 
own alleged diplomats to find out that their much vaunted 
diplomacy is not half so bright and original as they have 
flattered themselves it was, but, per-contra, that they 
have really been made to play the part of kittens to the 
shrewd old monkeys of Germany and England. 

The sooner, therefore, we join Russia and France in 
their present movement the better it will be not only for 
the cause of justice to the much outraged China, but for 
peace and comfort to ourselves and our "body politic" 
now in the throes of an approaching election. 

C. M. H. 
Sept. ist, 1900. 



LofC. 



22 



THE OUTRAGE OF CHINA DENOUNCED. 



From Editoral in Brooklyn Eagle 
Sept. 2, 1900. 






OUTDOING THE BOXERS. 



" Now, while we have come to look on all news from 
China with suspicion, and while we know that the people 
in some of the Chinese cities are abler liars than certain 
employed in the offices of yellow journals, there is one 
note that we hear from day to day and it persists in 
spite of denials : it is the note of protest against the 
rapine and outlawry and license of the allies in China." 



" Can it be that all of these stories, coming day after 
day, and from so many different correspondents and so 
many different points, are inventions? It is not to be 

23 



supposed. There must be a foundation, then, for these 
tales of murder, robbery and outrage. Our war for 
civilization is a hell of barbarity." 



"And this is a war of civilization ! This is a war carried 
on in the name of a merciful God ! This is a rebuke 
for the protest of a faction against white men's interfer- 
ence ! It is to this end that white missionaries have been 
preparing the yellow people for the coming of the forces 
of law, morality and enlightenment ! Is there one man 
with a human heart in his breast who would not be 
a Boxer, if he were a Chinese, and fight to the last gasp 
against the entrance of this devil's horde into his empire ? 
If there is, let him hide himself in knowledge of the 
shame in which his fellow men would hold him." 



"We must protest to the uttermost against the acqui- 
sition of territory or power by people whose only idea 
of rule is loot. Civilization, forsooth ! The sarcasm 
of it ! The damnable hypocrisy of it ! " 



24 



EXTRACTS FROM 

CAUSES OF ANTI-FOREIGN FEELING IN 
CHINA." 



By GEO. B. SMYTH, President Anglo-Chinese College, 
Foochow. 



NORTH AMERICAN REVIEW, AUGUST, 1900. 



THE ORIGIN OF THE "BOXERS. 33 



Up to the fall of 1897, Shan tung enjoyed an excel- 
lent reputation for its treatment of foreigners and native 
Christians ; indeed, there were more Christians in that 
province than in any other in the Empire, except Fuh- 
keen. On the 1st of November of that year, however, 
there was a riot in which two German Catholic mission- 
aries were brutally murdered, and Germany promptly 

2 5 



seized upon the crime as a pretext for what it had long 
contemplated, the seizure of a portion of Chinese terri- 
tory. On the 14th, Admiral Diedrichs landed troops at 
Kiao Chow, and negotiations were entered upon for the 
formal cession to Germany of that which she had already 
seized. 



This high-handed act worked an omnimous change 
in the attitude of the people towards foreigners, and 
especially Germans. It was not safe for Germans in small 
companies to travel in the interior, and three who later 
unwisely did so were attacked, though they fortunately 
escaped with their lives. To punish the perpetraters 
of what the German Government choose to consider 
another unprovoked crime, the commander of Kiao Chow 
immediately sent troops to the scene of the attack, and 
they burned down two villages. This harsh and indis- 
criminate retaliation, in which innocent suffered as well 
as guilty, inflamed the people to madness, and many 
foreigners predicted serious results. These were not 
long in coming. A bitter anti-Christian, anti-foreign 
spirit showed itself throughout the province, which was 
later intensified by the Imperial Decree of March 15th 
of last year, issued on the demand of France, conferring 
practically official rank on Roman Catholic bishops 
and missionaries. The position of equality with Vice- 
roys and Governors thus given to the bishops, and 
equality with provincial treasurers, provincial judges, 
taotais and prefects given to the various orders of priests, 

26 



together with the right of interview without the media- 
tion of consul or minister, gave the Roman Catholics an 
influence of which the people had good reason to believe 
they would not be slow to avail themselves. In law suits 
between their adherents and non-Christian people, the 
latter had, or thought they had, no chance ; and, as in 
other provinces, there was general complaint of the con- 
stant interference of the priests in litigation. 

Enraged at the injustice thus perpetrated, seeing in 
the missionaries and the Germans the causes of the 
country's humiliation, and in the conduct of the latter 
especially the beginning of an attempt by the foreigners 
to seize the province and, finally, the whole Empire, the 
Boxers began the series of crimes which have since made 
them infamous, preached a patriotic, anti-Christian, anti- 
foreign propaganda, and resolved to drive from the 
country the intruders, and all that they represented. 



MISSIONS AND THEIR EFFECTS. 

Apart altogether from the offence to the national 
pride involved in undertaking to teach a faith claiming 
to be higher than their own, the whole missionary move- 
ment is unhappily associated with conquest, and its 
toleration is the result of successful war. Noble, there- 
fore, though the motives of the Christian Church are, 
its work is tainted by its association with force and con- 
quest. To thoughtful Chinese familiar with the recent 
history of their country, the presence of the missionary 

27 



in every province, in country villages as well as in great 
cities, is a reminder of the national humiliation. 



Again, in the minds of many, the whole missionary 
movement is suspected because of the striking contrast be- 
tween its professed aim and the conduct of some Christian 
governments toward China. And surely this cannot be 
wondered at. With Western missionaries preaching 
peace and Western governments practicing murder, it 
should not surprise us if the Chinese suspect the former 
as much as they fear the latter. You cannot go to a 
people with the Bible in one hand and a bludgeon in the 
other, and expect that they will accept either cheerfully. 



FOREIGN AGGRESSIONS, EARLY AND 
RECENT. 



The cicumstances attending the first introduction of 
Europeans to the Chinese were such as to give that 
people the impression that the visitors were little better 
than pirates and murderers, and not a little has occurred 
since to deepen that unhappy feeling. " Rapine, murder, 
and a constant appeal to force" says Gorst, "chiefly 
characterized the commencement of Europe's commer- 
cial intercourse with China." When the first Portuguese 
traders visited that country in the sixteenth century, they 

28 



were well received ; but they were soon followed by a 
horde of unscrupulous adventurers, who sometimes forced 
their way into the interior and committed high-handed 
acts of piracy. 



Still more deplorable was the impression made by 
the Spaniards. After they seized the Philippine Islands 
in 1543, a great expansion of trade with China resulted; 
and such large numbers of Chinese settlers went there 
that in time they outnumbered the Europeans in propor- 
tion of twenty-five to one. The Spaniards saw in this 
great influx of Chinese immigrants a menace to their own 
sovereignty, and they massacred the larger part of the 
defenceless and innocent Chinese. The impression 
which such savage butchery of its people made on their 
native province of Canton may easily be imagined, and 
partly accounts both for the reception which the English 
met with in the following century when they first entered 
the Canton River, and for the fact that the people of that 
province are, with the exception of those of Hu-nan, the 
most truculent haters of foreigners in China. 

The early Dutch and English adventurers had also 
a share in blackening the reputation of Europe in the 
East, and it is not surprising that the Chinese came in 
time to look upon all Europeans as barbarians, men whose 
only objects were robbery and war. 

The period of unblushing barbarism came to an end 
at last, and Europe set about entering into relations 
with China on the principles of international law. But 

29 



even then, the claims made to equality, however reason- 
able and just, gave great offence to the Chinese Govern- 
ment and people. 



Some European governments have been guilty, even 
in recent times, of the most atrocious conduct toward 
China. In 1884, a French fleet entered the Min River 
and anchored ten miles below the great city of Foochow, 
in Southeastern China, to frighten the government of 
Peking into paying an indemnity, demanded by the 
French Minister for alleged guilty complicity in helping 
the people in Tonquin in their fight against the seizure 
of their country by France. When he failed, the case 
was given over to the Admiral, the French ships opened 
fire, and in less than an hour the Chinese fleet, with the 
exception of one ship, was destroyed and over 3000 
Chinese killed, and all without a declaration of war. The 
bodies of the dead floated out to sea on the tide, many 
of them were borne back on the returning current, and 
for days it was hardly possible to cross the river any- 
where between the anchorage and the sea twenty miles 
below without seeing some of these dreadful reminders 
of French treachery and brutality. The people of the 
city were roused to fury, and the foreigners would have 
been attacked but for the presence of American and 
English gunboats anchored off the settlement to protect 
them. If some of us had been killed the world would 



30 



have rung with denunciation of Chinese cruelty, but the 
3000 victims of French guns would never have been 
thought of. 



All these instances of the cruel use of force by- 
foreigners were heralded far and wide by the Chinese 
newspapers, and the impression made on the people it is 
not hard to imagine. These papers have also made the 
reading public aware of the deprivations of territory re- 
cently suffered by China, and of the cool discussions of 
the dismemberment of the Empire indulged in by the 
foreign press. No wonder the people were humiliated 
and angry. Many a time have I been asked by thought- 
ful and patriotic Chinese when the end would come and 
China cease to be an independent State. All her finest 
harbors have already been taken ; there is not a place on 
her coast where her fleet can rendezvous, except by the 
grace of foreigners. Port Arthur, a fortified harbor, on 
which millions were spent, has been leased to Russia ; 
Wei-Hai-Wei, with its fortifications, on the coast of 
Shan-tung, to England; Kiao Chow, also in Shan-tung, 
with the finest bay on the coast of China, large enough 
to accommodate the fleets of the world, to Germany ; 
and Kwang-Chau bay, on the southern coast of Kwang- 
tung, to France. There would be some justification for 
these seizures — for seizures they are, though called only 
" leases " — if they had been made in retaliation for broken 
pledges, for crimes for which the government was re- 
sponsible; but every one knows that, with the apparent 



31 



exception of Kiao Chow, and the exception is apparent 
only, they are all due to the mutual fears and mutual 
jealousies of foreign States. The sovereignty of China 
over her own domain is not recognized ; he who is strong 
enough may take what he pleases, and his neighbor, lest 
the balance of power be broken, may go and do the 
same. That under such circumstances the wrath of the 
people is aroused is no matter lor wonder. The West 
cannot sow the wind in the East without having later to 
meet the terrible necessity of reaping the whirlwind. 



See also a series of six other articles on " The Crisis 
in China" in The North American Review for August, 1900. 



"Is there one man with a human heart in 
his breast who would not be a Boxer, if he were 
a Chinese, and £ght to the last gasp against the 
entrance of this devil's horde into his empire? 
If there is, let him hide himself in knowledge 
of the shame in which his fellow men would 
hold him." — Brooklyn Eagle, 



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THE NORTH AMERICAN 
REVIEW 

f"or august, 1900. 

Contains the following Articles on 

Gbe Crisis in Cbina* 



The Duty of America 

John Barrett, formerly United States Minister to Siam. 

The Responsibility of the Rulers 

Lieut. Carlyon Bellairs, R. N. 

America's Share in the Event of Partition 

Demetrius C. Boulger. 

Causes of Anti-Foreign Feeling 

Geo. B. Smyth, President of the Anglo-Chinese College at Foochow. 

The Japanese View of the Situation 

A Japanese Diplomat. 

The Gathering of the Storm 

Robert E. Lewis. 

America's Treatment of the Chinese 

Charles F. Holder. 



J. press* 



LBAp'05 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 

019 714 445 2 








